What You Should Know: 

– Walmart announced today the difficult decision to close all 51 Walmart Health centers and discontinue its virtual care offering. This comes after five years of operation for the health centers.

– The company cited a “challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs” as reasons for the closure. This highlights the difficulty of establishing a profitable healthcare business model, especially in the current environment.

Priority Shift on Profitable Existing Strengths: Pharmacies and Vision Centers

Despite closing the health centers, Walmart remains committed to providing healthcare services through its extensive network of nearly 4,600 pharmacies and over 3,000 vision centers. These established businesses offer a range of services, including:

• Immunizations
• Testing and treatment services
• Specialty pharmacy medication and care
• Medication therapy management
• Health screenings

The company emphasizes the importance of pharmacies, particularly in medically underserved areas where they often serve as the primary point of healthcare access for many communities.

Innovation Continues in Other Healthcare Services

Walmart highlights its ongoing commitment to healthcare innovation through initiatives like:

• The Walmart Healthcare Research Institute
• Development of new health programs
• Expansion of fresh food and OTC (over-the-counter) offerings

Supporting Patients and Employees During Transition

The company assures a smooth transition for patients with ongoing care needs and offers support to impacted associates:

• Patients: Continuity of care will be ensured.
• Associates: All associates will be offered the opportunity to transfer to another Walmart or Sam’s Club location. Those who choose not to transfer will receive 90 days of pay and potentially severance benefits.
• Providers: Partnering providers will continue to serve patients during the closure period and receive compensation for 90 days.

“Today we are sharing the difficult decision to close Walmart Health and Walmart Health Virtual Care. Through our experience managing Walmart Health centers and Walmart Health Virtual Care, we determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue,” in an official statement.

What You Should Know: 

– Today, Walmart Health announced it is entering into a relationship with both Ambetter from Sunshine Health, which provides insurance to individuals through the Florida health insurance marketplace, and Orlando Health, a private, not-for-profit network of community and specialty hospitals across Florida, through Care Coordination Agreements.

– These collaborations will help Floridians gain access to affordable healthcare options with the type of convenience consumers are seeking, and will initially focus on improving referral management, care coordination and patient engagement.

Serving Ambetter Health Members with Convenient Care

Beginning November 1, Ambetter from Sunshine Health now includes Walmart Health Centers as a preferred provider in Clay, Duval, Hillsborough, Orange, Osceola, Pasco and Seminole counties in Florida through the Ambetter Value Plan. The relationship, which is built on a shared vision to help Americans gain access to affordable healthcare options, will initially focus on patient engagement through care coordination and referral management.

This collaboration marks an expansion of the existing relationship between Walmart Health and Ambetter Health, the largest and longest running carrier on the health insurance marketplace and one of the leading healthcare programs provided by Centene Corporation (“Centene”) (NYSE: CNC). The relationship started earlier this year as the companies collaborated to enhance awareness of Medicaid redetermination efforts and expand access to Marketplace health insurance within Walmart Health Centers.

Working Together with Orlando Health to Coordinate Care

Walmart Health and Orlando Health have agreed to more closely align on their approach to serving patients and managing patient outcomes in the Orlando community. Working together, they will streamline the patient experience through effective transitions of care and ensure robust communication between Walmart Health Center and Orlando Health providers.

Exapansion Impact

Continuing its commitment to making quality healthcare more convenient, accessible and affordable for customers across the country, Walmart Health expanded its footprint with 17 new Health Centers across the state of Florida this year. Walmart Health now supports the state of Florida with a total of 23 Walmart Health Centers, adjacent to their respective Supercenters, to deliver primary care, labs, x-ray and EKG, behavioral health, dental, select specialty services, and community health all in one facility. These Walmart Health centers offer care seven days a week with convenient weekend and evening hours as well as telehealth options on Sunday

Availability

Marketplace open enrollment runs from November 1, 2023 through January 15, 2024. Ending dates will vary by state. Learn more about The Ambetter from Sunshine Health’s Value Plan with Walmart Health network as well as other Ambetter Health plan options through ambetter.sunshinehealth.com.

What You Should Know: 

– Walmart announced it is expanding virtual primary care, building on the traditional telehealth service for occasional sick visits for Walmart associates and their families. 

– As part of this expansion, virtual care options for digestive health and physical therapy will also be available, including some basic at-home lab work early next year. Most virtual health care benefits are available at no cost to associates and their families ($0 co-pay).  

What You Should Know:

Morgan Health, the JPMorgan Chase & Co. business unit announced a $25M investment in Kindbody, a fertility clinic network and global family-building benefits provider for employers offering the full-spectrum of reproductive care from preconception to postpartum through menopause.

Kindbody is a technology-driven fertility clinic network and family-building benefits provider for employers offering virtual and in-person care supporting 112 leading employers, covering more than 2.4 million lives. The company’s clients span virtually every industry and include Walmart, Medtronic, Lyft and GEICO. Kindbody serves patients at 32 signature clinics and hundreds of partner clinics in the U.S.

A New Generation of Fertility Care

Kindbody’s clinically-managed program covers the full-spectrum of reproductive health, including both female and male fertility, which encompasses fertility assessments and education, fertility preservation, genetic testing, in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor and surrogacy services, and adoption, as well as a full continuum of reproductive care including physical, mental and emotional support.

Kindbody’s model is unique in that it is the only family-building benefits provider for employers that owns and operates fertility clinics. The company saves employers 25%-30% by contracting directly to provide comprehensive virtual and in-person care to their employees. As the direct provider of care, Kindbody is uniquely positioned to decrease cost, improve the patient experience and deliver better health outcomes.

What You Should Know:

• Walmart Health announced its expansion into the state of Oklahoma, with four new health centers in the Oklahoma City area in 2024. This expansion into Oklahoma is a continuation of Walmart Health’s commitment to making quality healthcare more convenient, accessible and affordable for customers in the communities we serve.
• The new state-of-the-art facilities will be approximately 5,750 sq ft, located beside Walmart Supercenters, and will feature Walmart Health’s full suite of health services to provide care to busy families. These services may vary by location, but include primary care, labs, X-ray and EKG, behavioral health, dental, hearing, select specialty services, community health and telehealth. This includes integrating Epic’s electronic health record system across all our Walmart Health locations
• This announcement comes on the heels of Walmart Health recently sharing plans for the addition of 28 new health center locations to its portfolio in 2024 in Missouri, Arizona and Texas.

What You Should Know:

– Today, Walmart announced it will add 28 new Walmart Health centers, with 75+ total locations by the end of the year. This continues our commitment to making quality healthcare more convenient, accessible and affordable for customers in the communities we serve.

– The expansion will increase Walmart Health’s footprint into two new states including Missouri and Arizona, deepening our presence in Texas in the Dallas metro area and growing into Houston.  This includes integrating Epic’s electronic health record system (EHR) across our Walmart Health locations.

Walmart Health Doubles in Size, Expands in 2 States

The announcements expand Walmart Health’s footprint into two new states – Missouri and Arizona – and deepen our presence in Texas. By the end of 2024, we’ll have more than 75 Walmart Health centers across the United States. The new state-of-the-art facilities will be approximately 5,750 sq ft, located beside Walmart Supercenters, and will feature Walmart Health’s full suite of health services to provide care to busy families. These services may vary by location, but include primary care, labs, X-ray and EKG, behavioral health, dental, hearing, select specialty services, community health and telehealth.

The first of the new Walmart Health centers will open in the first quarter of 2024. The specific growth locations include:

– 10 locations in Dallas, TX metro area

– 8 locations in Houston, TX metro area

– 6 locations in Phoenix, AZ metro area

– 4 locations in Kansas City, MO metro area

What You Should Know:

– Today, Walmart announced a three-year agreement with the nonprofit organization, CareSource to address cardiometabolic conditions and maternal health in under-resourced and underserved communities.

– The partnership expands the work Walmart and CareSource are doing to help improve care around maternal and child health in Georgia – the two launched a pilot in Georgia earlier this year to help Black maternal health across the state.

Address Cardiometabolic Conditions and Maternal Health

The three-year deal will leverage Walmart’s position as a retailer and provider of health and wellness services, and CareSource’s role in the administration and delivery of Medicaid, Medicare and other health plan benefits and services.  The two companies will aim to cultivate innovative, evidence-based solutions to improve health outcomes in under-resourced and underserved communities where racial health inequities are widespread.

The partnership will begin in Ohio, with a focus on cardiometabolic conditions (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension). According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, heart disease, stroke and diabetes were among the top 10 leading causes of death in the state.

The two entities will also work together on a maternal and child health program to support positive lifestyle behavior change and improve maternal and child health outcomes in Georgia, the state with the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the country. Under the agreement, expecting mothers or mothers that are 12 months post-partum and enrolled in CareSource’s Georgia Medicaid managed care plan will have access to Walmart in-store Community Health Workers, a “directed spend” program providing monthly funds to spend on food, tele-nutrition services, tele-doula services and will receive a Walmart+ membership.

“This partnership will address the major needs our members face, which are difficulty with transportation, access to healthy food, access to care and assistance with care coordination,” said CareSource Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Williams.  Dr. David further stated, “We know providing additional support, such as an in-store community health worker, will create another access point to ensure our members have the resources they need, within a location they frequent. As a result of this relationship, we expect an immediate, positive impact in the lives of our members.”

Jon Bloom, MD, CEO and Co-founder of Podimetrics

From a digital health perspective, 2022 was a reset year for many and a serious reality check. We went from sky high growth to the sky is falling, and in 2023 I think this market correction movement will continue forward. To me, the biggest surprise of 2022 was that despite the market tanking, digital health companies continued to truck forward with huge deals. This includes massive acquisitions like Amazon and OneMedical, as well as deals like CVS Health and Signify.

Oliver Kharraz, CEO & Founder, Zocdoc

Big tech will make noise, not real change, with their forays into fixing healthcare. Big tech companies have not worked to improve healthcare from the inside out. Instead, they’ve endeavored to make money via their respective core businesses: Apple aims to drive hardware adoption (Apple Watch), Google tried to tackle big data applied to clinical questions (Verily), and Amazon has worked to leverage its supply chain strengths (Pillpack). This does not solve the problem at the root of the poor American healthcare experience: a uniquely disconnected ecosystem that fails patients and providers. Changing this system involves building the connective tissue to make disparate systems work together, and that’s a long, hard, and slow road. It’s also not a road big tech companies are set up to travel. Focused on growing their market caps, they continually aim to leverage their core competencies to expand their business into new areas. The $4T healthcare industry is a prime and seemingly lucrative target for this expansion, whether their core competencies are relevant to healthcare or not.  As a result, big tech will not make traction against improving the systemic issues that plague the healthcare system in 2023.

Nate Fox, co-founder and CTO, Ribbon Health

Racial Bias in AI Algorithms: Since AI is frequently used in healthcare, it needs to be used with a code of ethics to prevent bias. Patients prefer familiarity and personalized care, and research shows this can lead them to choose a provider of the same race or ethnic background. Machine learning models can help extract provider data to give patients the full scope of available providers out there and their specialties, location, and more, but what we shouldn’t do is program an algorithm to predict or assume race. A human component is needed in these AI programs to make sure the system is not guessing a provider’s race based on their name due to inherent bias. If you want to use AI without bias, you need to have a human oversee its operations.

Omri Shor is the founder and CEO of Medisafe

Incorporating digital health early: I believe that incorporating digital health tools earlier in the prescription process and combining digital with traditional medication therapy will increase in 2023. As more digital medication management solutions gain FDA approval, there is an increased opportunity to integrate digital support as part of the medication process and reduce medication abandon rates.

Anish Sebastion, CEO and Co-founder of Babyscripts

Walmart, CVS, Optum, Amazon, and others have made headlines this year with a series of acquisitions and partnerships that promise to disrupt traditional healthcare models. These players are honing in on at-home medical services and primary care, extending their reach deeper into the care continuum and blurring the lines between who owns what part of the space.

These players have a wealth of consumer data at their disposal, and those in the retail space have existing locations in some of the most vulnerable areas of the country in terms of access to care (in 2017, 90 percent of Americans lived within 10 miles of a Walmart compared to 82 percent who lived the same distance from a hospital). Existing infrastructure also positions Big Retail to partner on social determinants of health risks, such as food insecurity, giving them an edge on traditional providers.

These new offerings threaten to siphon younger, healthier patients from health systems, putting increased pressure on hospitals to integrate at-home care models and own the digital front door. While health systems will continue to capture the majority of condition-specific and specialty care; ownership of primary care, insurance services, and ancillary care (lab/imaging/pharmacy) are at the center of a contentious battle.

Ankit Gupta, CEO/Founder of Bicycle Health

Flight for quality investors: Digital health startups banked a record-breaking $29.1B in 2021. With the market downturns we’ve seen in 2022, that trend will shift. Digital health companies that can’t demonstrate momentum in terms of growth, engagement or evidence-based clinical outcomes will struggle to find funding in 2023. Investors are going to be looking for good outcomes, good economics, and a path to profitability.

Veda co-founders, Meghan Gaffney and Dr. Bob Lindner

Blockchain will continue to be “buzzword” across the industry: Over the past few years, we’ve seen blockchain begin to touch almost every industry – healthcare’s no exception. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to see blockchain trending as it’s implemented across the healthcare ecosystem. While we’ve all likely heard of blockchain technology’s potential to transform healthcare by putting the patient at the center the experience, we should evaluate if it’s actually worth the hype and if it’s able to solve the problems its being advertised for.

Justin Norden, MD, Partner at GSR Ventures

In 2023, we will see accelerated adoption of digital heath companies who are using AI to ease provider burnout and shortages. As health systems are running tighter budgets in 2023, the startups that are demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of automation will see systems move faster to partner.

Yossi Bahagon, Chairman of Sweetch

Innovating and Integrating Wearables: We should anticipate more inter-device integration and a greater variety of devices including continuous glucose monitors (CGM), insulin pumps, and hybrid closed loop systems being introduced to the markets. This will lead to advances in comfort, convenience, durability, and user-experience.

Robin Shah, Thyme Care CEO and Co-Founder

We anticipate a continued shift in the digital health ecosystem towards personalized, disease-specific care that prioritizes support throughout all facets of treatment. The trend is clear: chronic care patients and their families want a care team that supports them through every step of the process, including sourcing and explaining viable options, as well as a consistent care team well-versed on a patient’s given case. The digital health industry is rising to the occasion, with value-based cancer care  at the forefront, as we will see at HLTH 2022. As this trend continues, companies will face the challenge of creating comprehensive support through all facets of the patients’ journey to health and doing so in a cost-effective manner.

Greg Mayes, President and CEO at Reunion Neuroscience

2023 could bring the first regulatory approval for a medicine for mental health using a psychedelic backbone.  This is incredibly exciting and great news for the hundreds of millions of people that are negatively impacted by the ongoing mental health crisis in our society.  Moreover, the achievement of this milestone will validate the need for further investment in psychedelics in additional indications where the unmet medical need remains huge.

Maneesh Jain, CEO and co-founder of Mirvie

Desire for personalized, proactive and preventive care in pregnancy will rise: In 2023, expecting parents will demand the same personalized care that they receive in other areas of their healthcare in their pregnancy journeys. As such, pregnancy health must start transforming from one-size-fits-none to right-sized care for every mom to begin addressing untenable trends of rising blood-pressure disorders like preeclampsia and increases in preventable pregnancy-related deaths in the United States. Breakthroughs like predictive technology driven by biological insights to foresee complications further down the road in a pregnancy will continue to advance, enabling a new future of personalized and preventive pregnancy care.

Dr. Adrienne Boissy Chief Medical Officer at Qualtrics and Staff Neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic

Transformative organizations will bake empathy into leadership and operations: 47% of healthcare workers plan to leave the industry within the next two years. Not to overstate the obvious, but this is a heartbreaking number we have never seen before. For years, studies have shown us exhaustion, lack of value alignment in the workplace, and rising mental health concerns are plaguing our caregivers. And, patients and families are seemingly more frustrated themselves – often directed at people doing their best. Surprisingly then, for the first time in years, we are hearing patient experience and communication training programs are defunded, experience leaders – and many others – are leaving their roles, and experience efforts are still fighting to be relevant and resourced. In the year ahead, experience programs – and empathy at scale – are alarmingly at risk as budgets shrink and many experience leaders are pushing the rock uphill with small teams, lack of current and future investment, and their tanks on empty.

If we continue to think about patient experience programs as doing what is required from a regulatory standpoint, we miss the enormous opportunity to understand how empathy and the human experience have a role in every single part of the organization. As with any transformation, it will require courage and creativity. Obvious additional spaces for experience work are in caring for our own people and connecting patient and employee experience more holistically, but also less obvious, more operational places like contact centers to drive access and growth, safety processes like RCAs, and revenue cycle to drive efficiency and dollars.

Rather than limiting patient experience efforts, now is the time for the industry to step up and fully support its people by ingraining empathy into broader healthcare operations, caregiver culture, and actual transformation. Whether digital or human, a commitment to empathy and compassion will connect the dots across an organization, by listening to pain points and joy in the moment in all channels, deeply understanding the emotions and values of patients and employees and then honoring them by acting on what we hear with processes that work, feel intuitive, and even delight. Experience leaders can’t do it alone – 2023 can and should be the year healthcare invests in empathy at scale.

Sandeep Shah, CEO and Founder of Skyscape

Healthcare services will be beholden to “consumerization,” or consumer demands for a more connected, transparent patient experience. Millennials and Gen Zers today have lived digitally-connected lives, and most consumer services have already catered to digital demands – whether that’s ordering grocery delivery, shopping online without visiting the store, or purchasing a car to be delivered. The healthcare industry is next, as providers must build relationships with their consumers.

I expect a more patient-friendly experience, incorporating trends such as online scheduling and onboarding to create more efficient in-person visits, automated post-visit follow ups, and better incorporating remote care into the experience, and even direct patient communication with providers to build trust.

Chris Bumgardner, Chief Technology Officer at 100Plus

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital health and virtual care, and now moving forward into 2023, we will continue to see consumerism in healthcare at the forefront of the health tech evolution. Patients now have more options for how and where they access care, and they will continue to seek a more personalized healthcare experience. Healthcare organizations will be pushed to leverage technology that can be incorporated into their patients’ daily lives. And as a result, there will be continued growth in the adoption of connected health technologies such as AI-virtual health assistants, remote patient monitoring and wearables that allow this type of personalization of the health experience while also delivering a more proactive approach to care management.  

Julie Stegman, Vice President, Nursing Segment of Health Learning, Research & Practice  at Wolters Kluwer

Nursing education goes to the metaverse: Over the last decade, technology has fundamentally transformed nursing education. Post-pandemic, experiential learning remains an integral part of educating new nurses, whether delivered online, in the classroom, in the simulation lab, or taking a hybrid approach.  No matter the setting, leveraging virtual simulation, and adaptive learning are critical to engage students and help them build clinical judgment and ensure they are prepared for practice. In 2023, nursing education continues to be a leader in innovation, leaping forward by embracing the metaverse and leveraging virtual reality.  Virtual reality creates new, immersive learning opportunities so students can enhance their clinical education by practicing skills, working in teams and gaining exposure to the fuller and more complex caseloads that nurses manage in real life, better preparing new nurses for the demands of real-world clinical practice even when they don’t have physical access to clinical practice settings.

Kuldeep Jiwani, SVP of Data Science at HiLabs

Going into 2023, we can expect to see AI used more frequently to discover the hidden potential of dirty data in healthcare. Health plans will deprioritize manual data entry and switch to ML-based techniques, which are cost effective, faster to implement and easier to manage. Where the algorithm learns context from the data itself, one just needs to feed it with large historical data to auto-discover the context. Specifically, AI will be used to solve for use cases like detecting:

– Data quality issues in clinical data: This can help in maintaining better monitoring of care provided to patients

– Misattributions in value-based care programs: This can ensure patients get attributed to the right providers

– Overpayments in claims processing: This can ensure both providers and payers are fairly compensated

– Inaccuracies in provider directory data: This can prevent surprise billing for patients

Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment of Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer

Open medicine to come of age: Growing interest in open access as well as preprints in the medical arena, in part due to support from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has pushed the publishing side of the Open Medicine movement into the forefront in recent years.  But other global concerns – including reduction in global and local health disparities, the push towards personalized medicine, renewed focus on global health in the post-pandemic era, and the effort to more broadly distribute funding for medical research – will ensure that the conversation around Open Medicine will broaden in 2023 to become a more all-encompassing and compelling vision for global well-being.  The need for openness, dialogue, accelerated innovation, and global collaboration demonstrated by the pandemic will make Open Medicine a key topic in any conversation around society being better prepared for future threats.

Stacey Rivkin, Vice President, Client Solutions, H1

Healthcare influencers won’t leave the (Twitter) nest, but will spread their wings. Despite the threats that influencers (including healthcare opinion leaders) will leave the flock amid Twitter’s ongoing turmoil, the reality is that they will continue to use the platform to share and amplify their messages. Still, we’ll see practitioners spread their wings as they become more digitally savvy and comfortable creating digital content (think: dermatologists sharing stories on Instagram, or pediatricians creating YouTube shorts).

Evangelos Hytopoulos, Sr. Director of data science at iRhythm

There is no doubt that AI has become mainstream in many areas. In medicine, AI approaches are currently both developed and deployed at a rapid rate, fueled by the dearth of data that already exist from different modalities (genetic, genomic, images, EHR, etc.), as well as the continuous streams of data that are provided by wearables.

The majority of models today are based on supervised learning, where labels are combined with measurements to teach an algorithm to predict unseen data. However, it takes a lot of effort to create a labeled data set and as a result, usually only a subset of the data can be labeled – thus limiting the learning capacity of the current models.

In upcoming years, we can expect to see AI approaches that are based on the use of self-supervised and generative AI algorithms in order to facilitate the incorporation of a larger volume of data in model training.

Supervised learning is capable of learning important features of the underlying measurements that are a richer representation of the data. The advantage of generative algorithms is the creation of synthetic data – labels coming from a different signal domain and the important features are learned from the domain of interest. In both cases, proper validation will be required to prove the validity of the algorithms and the lack of any bias in its predictions.

Mifan Careem, Vice President – Solutions Architecture and Head of Healthcare Practice at WSO2

Fostering Healthcare Innovation in Wearable Devices: From fitness bands to smart watches, consumers are increasingly turning to wearable devices to track key health measures. At the same time, employers and health insurance organizations see these devices as one way to improve health among staff and members and reduce program costs. This presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation in the healthcare industry, but too often the scope of information is limited by the inability to share data with them. This is because the healthcare data is locked up in a variety of healthcare systems using different formats and standards. In 2023, we need to see the industry move toward using APIs, ideally in the Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR) format, as an intermediate layer for exchanging electronic health records. In this way, data can be readily and securely provided to stakeholders, such as third-party organizations, internal or external developers, and other apps or systems, in order to deliver new, meaningful, and more personalized digital healthcare apps to consumers with wearable devices.

Dr. Roger Seheult, MD, Medical Advisor to On/Go

I predict that bringing rapid patient care directly to people at their homes – what some are calling “direct-to-patient healthcare” – will see increased adoption in 2023 as the health industry prioritizes new, affordable, easily accessible solutions. In the olden days, before hospitals and doctors’ offices were commonplace, most people were treated by doctors who made house calls. Everything old is new again, and 21st-century house calls across the entire treatment journey from diagnostics to telemedicine to treatment will become more commonplace.

Tracy Curley, CFO and interim CEO at iSpecimen

Focusing on the macroeconomic environment, which remains impacted by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, there continues to be uncertainty about the strength of the global, Asia Pacific, UK and US economies. High-interest rates and a potential recession remain a concern for all market participants. At ISPC, we are closely monitoring the pace of specimen transactions. We believe that this industry can be resilient through a continued economic downturn or recession, as well as any impacts from inflation.

Dr. Linda Marban, CEO at Capricor Therapeutics

For the first time in a long time, we are seeing the emergence of three new viral infections: RSV, the flu, and COVID – all of these viral syndromes that were sitting dormant while the world was locked down for COVID-19. Given this triple threat, I think that we will begin to see the industry addressing how we are going to manage infectious diseases moving forward. For a while, things were focused solely on COVID.

Ariel Katz, CEO & Co-Founder at H1

Drug approvals and development will hinge on diversity. The FDA and other governing bodies will increasingly hold pharma companies accountable for diversity in clinical trials. In doing so, we’ll see more and more drugs rejected – not because of efficacy issues, but because diverse patient populations and providers are not being considered or recruited. We’ve already seen this with Eli Lilly and Biogen, and there will be more. This will cost pharma companies millions of dollars in wasted clinical trial costs, to the tune of an average of $1M per day for three years. But it’s extremely necessary and overdue. For progress to take place, companies will need to be held accountable for real, substantial changes to their clinical trial processes.

Dr. Mike Montalto, Chief Scientific Officer at PathAI

During clinical trials, it’s essential to be able to gather as much accurate data related to the patient and to candidate drug’s effect following treatment, such that important decisions can be made as early as possible in the clinical drug development process. Do they have the right patients enrolled who are most likely to respond? Can they see changes locally in the tumor microenvironment that indicate the drug is having a biology effect? Is the drug effect meaningful beyond the measurement noise of endpoint analysis? AI-powered pathology holds the key to answering those and other questions and will be a “must have” data platform for generating entirely new insights from patient samples so drug developers can have confidence they have selected the right patients and can assess sooner whether a drug works. This will accelerate drug development and help get the right therapies to the right patients at the right time, thus advancing precision medicine.

David Bleakman, President of Drug Discovery & Development at PsychoGenics

Necessary and opportunist types of pharma M&A – As many companies struggle to raise money in public markets, necessary M&A amongst weak players that temporarily delays the inevitable and opportunistic M&A where the strong capitalize on distress to pick up assets cheaply.

Marie Lamont, Global RWE Data Strategy, Access & Enablement at IQVIA and General Manager at Inteliquet

While decentralized trials are opening the doors for broader patient populations to be involved in research, there is still room for improvement to reach all groups. Many research studies are focused on academic centers, thus we need to expand to offer more trials into other care settings to ensure better diversification. In the coming years, and especially as AI and automation technologies streamline the trial processes for better efficiency, we will see researchers working with community healthcare centers and professionals to reach underrepresented populations.

Jane Myles, V.P. of Clinical Trial Innovation at Curebase

The future of decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) will become clearer as the industry evolves and as governing bodies clarify regulations around the globe.  Furthermore, the release of ICH E6 will distill many aspects of data expectations and standards. And large scale commercial players like Walgreens, Walmart, and Best Buy entering the clinical landscape will quickly evolve how trials are conducted. At the same time, patients will continue to seek trial options with functions like online data entry, telehealth, and utilizing local providers. The complexity of the evolving modern trial landscape, combined with prioritizing patient needs, means that a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer possible.

What You Should Know:

– Higher prices across most health-related goods and services have consumers reeling to find better options to save money.

– Starting today, these consumers have access to SmartRx, the newest prescription discount card. While designed to compete directly with GoodRx, SingleCare, Carecard, SmartRx(a division ofSmarty) acts as a premium health savings that goes beyond prescription drugs. 

Offering Consumers a One-Stop For Premium Health Savings On Multiple Fronts

Launched in 2018, Smarty is a premiere online shopping destination that automatically applies the best coupon on purchases from more than 6,000 U.S. retailers, such as Target, Walmart and Best Buy, and from more than 20,000 global merchants. 

SmartRx offers its users a free discount card and a paid membership program. The SmartRx Discount Card helps consumers save up to 80% on their prescription drugs. SmartRx+ is a monthly membership program offering health savings beyond prescriptions – including rebates for doctor or dentist visits, telehealth care, prescription glasses or contacts, annual vaccines, and pet medications.

“SmartRx+ goes beyond prescription savings and offers a smart health care savings approach,” said Vipin Porwal, CEO and founder of Smarty and SmartRx. “There are other health care costs beyond prescriptions, including co-pays and pet medications, which may be significant burdens to some. Our approach helps ease these burdens in a simple and effective way.”

What You Should Know:

– Avanlee Care, a digital health tool for today’s caregivers is teaming up with Walmart to support the 65 million Americans currently caring for aging family members. As a part of Walmart’s “New Year Reset” program, the Avanlee Care app will be displayed and promoted at supercenter locations throughout Florida in the pharmacy and grocery sections of the stores.

– This collaboration is the first of its kind for both brands. The partnership serves to educate and support shoppers throughout their in-store experience, complete with delivery services for ease and convenience. 

– Avanlee Care was developed to serve the rapidly growing and underserved population of unpaid caregivers, simultaneously improving the lives of both the caregiver and the care receiver. Avanlee will be available in select Walmart locations later this month

Sunny Kumar, MD, Partner at GSR Ventures, a $3B AUM venture firm investing in early-stage digital health companies.

The most fascinating element of HLTH 2022 were the concurrent contrasts. Set against a challenging macroeconomic environment with decreases in venture funding and near-daily headlines of large layoffs cutting across the tech ecosystem, the energy and atmosphere at HLTH was positively exuberant with frequent comparisons to CES or even Coachella. As the attendees – from startups to investors to purchasers – look forward, there’s no doubt that the health tech community will have to adapt to a new, and potentially more reserved, normal in 2023, but there’s still tremendous underlying excitement about the immense potential of technology to deliver transformative impact across the healthcare ecosystem.

Lyle Berkowitz, MD, CEO of KeyCare, an Epic-based virtual care platform.

HLTH was back and bigger than ever. The excitement for digital health and innovation was clear, with a big focus on virtual care and artificial intelligence to help deal with the access, equity and quality issues we are all facing. For a startup like ours, it was a great place to talk to investors and most importantly to meet with business partners for collaboration efforts. There are an increasing number of virtual care companies looking to partner with health systems, and we had great conversations about how organizations can combine staff and technology to help health systems better manage their populations in a seamless and high quality way.

David Lareau, CEO of Medicomp Systems, which makes medical data relevant, usable and actionable.

The HLTH conference was very well-organized and amenities were much superior to HIMSS, but it was much more of a B2B and investor event, with little opportunity to meet with individuals from healthcare delivery enterprises. Overall, for us it was worthwhile as we were able to meet with several potential business partners.

Patty Hayward, VP of Industry Strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, which makes contact center solutions to improve the patient experience.

Consumerism is here to stay! Retail giants are doubling down on their healthcare bets with Amazon’s launch of Amazon Clinic, Walmart’s partnership with United around whole person health, and Instacart Health. It’s clear these consumer-centered companies believe delivering experiences and care journeys like ones patients and members are getting in other industries will create differentiation in healthcare.

Zac Fleming, SVP of Product, TimelyMD, a virtual health and well-being solution for higher education.

College students are among the most affected populations in the nation’s mounting mental health problem. HLTH22 underscored the role virtual care plays in expanding access to mental health services for people of all ages, regardless of location. According to the outcomes data we shared at HLTH22, 100% of college students who presented as potential suicide risks through our platform reported improvements in their mental health. A new age in the delivery of behavioral health has begun, one that is supported by technology and centered on the needs and expectations of healthcare consumers.

Brian Robertson, CEO of VisiQuate, provider of advanced revenue cycle analytics, intelligent workflow and AI-powered automation.

HLTH continues to be one of the highest-quality healthcare conferences there is. The always fun and positive atmospherics coupled with rich and dynamic content, great media access and coverage, and almost unlimited networking opportunities make it wholly worthwhile to attend. The challenge is that it is getting big fast, and some of the intimacy from the earlier years is fading a bit… like many things that become successful fast. The formula to solve for this, as with so many conferences and industry trade shows, is to do high-quality pre-work and post-conference follow-up. There’s an art form to that – and clearly one we are all still learning to master – but for now the “take home value” is high.

What You Should Know:

– In its latest edition of the Product Report, Amplitude Labs dives straight into results obtained from their exclusive Amplitude dataset, which shows how the product landscape has evolved from 2021 to 2022, including the product growth observed across 12 industries and eight countries.

– The report also highlights what the data suggests will be the 30 next hottest products across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Additionally, the report also covers how product and growth teams are responding to the current economic environment, including candid input about leveraging product-led growth to drive user engagement, retention, and monetisation.

Key Trends and Insights From The Product Report 2022

As a leading digital analytics platform—rated #1 in product analytics by G2 nine quarters in a row— Amplitude has an unparalleled understanding of the trends shaping digital activity. More than 1,800 paying customers, including Atlassian, Chick-fil-A, Marks & Spencer, NBCUniversal, PayPal, Shopify, and Under Armour, use Amplitude to understand how people are using their product, so they can deliver better product experiences and drive revenue growth. The Amplitude Behavioral Graph—including 1 trillion+ data points tracked every month—provides an expansive view into digital activity and behavioral analytics.

The growth detailed in The Product Report 2022 reinforces just how strong the digital product market remains. Here are the key findings from the report:

1. Global product usage grew 16% year-over-year, following the digital disruption in 2020 and 2021. Despite a turbulent economic environment, Amplitude’s data shows digital activity across industries continued to climb last year. Use of digital products rose by 16% between August 2021 and August 2022. That number represents a slower rate of growth than observed in the 18-months covered by Amplitude’s 2021 Product Report—when digital activity jumped by a striking 54% from January 2020 to August 2021. Digging into the data for eight countries—Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States— revealssimilar trajectories. Digital usage ticked steadily upwards from August 2021 to early 2022 and remained steady throughout summer 2022. One outlier: the tech powerhouse Singapore, where digital activity soared through the fall to hit more than 28% growth in October 2021, then slowed until spring 2022, when it took off again.

2. Four of the 30 Next Hottest Products saw more than 500% growth in monthly active users: social shopping app onthelook, relationship app Paired, AI scheduler Motion, and weight-loss program Found. To compile their list, Amplitude Labs analyzed aggregated monthly user data from a 13-month period, from June 2021 to June 2022. Primarily focusing on companies that were privately held as of June 2021 and only considering products that had at least 10,000 monthly active users (MAUs) at the beginning of that period. By the end of the analysis, most products had more than 400,000 monthly active users, and 11 products had more than 1 million.If the past is any indication, these companies may well become household names. Last year’s list included at least three companies that each went on to raise $100+ million funding rounds: Ramp, Pintu and Vivid. Another, One Finance, was acquired by Walmart’s fintech venture. And while economic conditions in

3. 2022 have caused investors to pull back on spending. Firms are injecting funds into products that show impressive growth.

4. Among the 12 industries analyzed, HR and staffing products, as well as upskilling and continuing education tools, showed the most growth, suggesting the economic downturn is prompting people around the world to boost their hireability or seek new opportunities.

Adoption of digital HR products—including job search platforms, people management software, and payroll and benefit applications—skyrocketed over the past year. By January 2022, usage was up 41.9% over the August 2021 baseline—and continued to climb through the summer to hit 118% in August 2022. That number—the biggest surge in growth of any industry we analyzed—tells the story of a labor market in flux. Employers in many sectors continue to navigate labor shortages, while others are reducing their workforces. And many job seekers, including some of those who left their jobs in the “Great Resignation,” rushed to find jobs in the summer before a feared recession. At the same time, employers are using these digital products to hire, onboard and—in unfortunate cases—offboard employees too.

5. Fears of a SaaS crash appear to have been overblown. After SaaS growth slowed in the spring, activity re-accelerated in late summer for this category of essential products. Growth in the SaaS category was strong over the past year, climbing steadily from the baseline in August 2021 throughout the autumn months. After a slight deceleration of growth in December, usage rose to its high point of 33.8% growth in March 2022. Adoption slowed in the following months before ticking up again in late summer to land at 25% over the baseline. It’s an impressive showing after months of growth during the pandemic. A separate Amplitude Labs analysis showed that SaaS website usage jumped 103% from January 2020 to April 2020, and the industry mostly maintained that growth rate over a two-year period, landing at 101% in December 2021. Thus, the continued growth of B2B SaaS demonstrated in this report—building upon last year’s growth—suggests that fears of a SaaS collapse may be overblown.

6. Crypto, by contrast, revealed a more complicated story. While activity slowed significantly after peaking at 78% growth in January compared to the baseline, overall crypto usage has grown by 25.8% since August 2021. To put that into perspective, that’s greater growth than we saw in the fintech category, suggesting that a decline in crypto values doesn’t equal a decline in crypto users. Although growth has decelerated in 2022, it is still growing positively overall.

7. With so much unknown about the economy, businesses are doubling down on product-led growth to make more cost-effective investments. To successfully navigate a challenging macroeconomic landscape, respondents are making major, forward-looking investments in an area they know will yield higher returns—product—while cutting back on high-cost areas, such as sales and marketing. Their top priorities: customer retention (43%), product engagement (37%), and product-led growth (37%). “Product-led growth has been an increasing focus for us prior to the downturn, and we are continuing to invest in it,” said a financial services product executive. “We are leveraging product-led growth to provide more opportunities to grow our subscriber base with minimum investment in paid marketing.”

A growth director at a B2B company agreed, noting, “PLG is a fantastic way to acquire users at little to no acquisition cost… but if one gets it right it helps tremendously to drive value for customers and creates more activation and retention.”

What You Should Know:

– A new dawn is on the horizon in healthcare. Equipped with new digital capabilities and pressured by new consumer expectations for personalized, convenient experiences, healthcare organizations face a predicament — act now and stay afloat, fail to act and get consumed by the competition, or risk financial ruin.

– Market research leader Forrester’s latest report explores 5 key predictors for healthcare in 2023.

Healthcare in the Era Post-Covid

COVID-19 changed how consumers and brands do business, and healthcare organizations are no exception; the pandemic accelerated transformation by a decade. In 2023, hospitals must identify their financial risk and focus on employee retention and recruitment as the threat of a recession looms. Healthcare organizations must reevaluate their approach to consumer engagement and experience as external industry players vie for a larger foothold in the healthcare market. Care will continue to extend beyond brick-and-mortar settings as technology advances to support chronic care management and decentralized trials in remote settings.

The top 5 predictions made by Forrester regarding 2023 are listed and explained as follows:

1. Economic downturn and consumer behaviors will spike hospital bankruptcies by a third: Inflation, the nurse staffing crisis, labor cost hikes, supply chain disruption, and sourcing shortages are breaking the banks of US hospitals and shutting their doors. Over the next 12 months, hospitals that averted financial crisis due to the Fed’s contingency provisions, state-based funding sources, and lender-granted waivers and extensions will succumb to a lack of cash flow.

In 2023, hospital and health system expenses are expected to increase by nearly $135 billion, driven by a projected $86 billion increase in labor expenses. Backlogs for surgery, imaging, and diagnostic services will prevent hospitals from recovering a $20 billion loss of revenue, spurred by the shutdown of elective procedures from March to May 2020. Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings for large healthcare organizations in 2022 are tracking 28% higher than in 2021, and this comes after large healthcare organization bankruptcies in 2021 were 44% behind 2020 levels. More than 30% of all rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closure due to low financial reserves or reliance on government aid.

Patient volumes, high-deductible health plans, and commercial insurance rates will move the needle on hospital sensitivity to recession from low to high. A lack of access to hospital care for underserved, chronically ill, and elderly populations will result in serious ramifications for public health and the economy. To navigate this crisis and stay afloat, hospitals should start quantifying their financial distress levels now by calculating their Z-score monthly and tracking it over 24 to 36 months. This will help identify risks and trigger a financial turnaround strategy for hospitals at or near the red zone.

2. Retail health clinics will double their share of the primary care market: Forrester forecasts that retail health clinics will double their share of the primary care market in 2023, fuelled by patient demand and additional retail companies looking to join the ranks of CVS-Aetna, Walgreens, Walmart, Amazon, and Optum-UnitedHealth Group, which are all buying primary care practices or hiring PCPs directly. In 2023, patients will choose retail health for their primary care needs, as health systems, constrained by inadequate resources, fail to match retail’s elevated patient experiences. Retailers’ large consumer bases and multiple store locations give them a leg up offering immediate care options when, where, and how patients want and need them.

The CDC says that nearly nine in 10 Americans live within five miles of a community pharmacy, making primary care readily available. Additionally, an increase in retail health clinics will help lower the cost burden on healthcare organizations and patients, with Modern Healthcare stating that care at retail clinics costs around 30% less than similar treatment at physician offices and 80% less than similar treatment at emergency departments. As retail health doubles its share of the primary care space, demand for health systems to step up their patient experience game will increase as patients flock to retail health primary care providers.

3. Decentralised clinical trials will double, signaling a shift in rural patient participation: During the past decade, DCTs have quietly made inroads into the vast landscape of clinical research. Only 120 DCTs were initiated globally, or a meager 0.4% of all initiated trials, in 2019. The pandemic dramatically exacerbated clinical study recruitment problems and catalyzed trial decentralization: 230 DCTs commenced in 2020 and 422 in 2021.

Forrester believes this surge was not just a knee-jerk reaction to the lockdown but the beginning of a lasting change in patient recruitment practices. The pressure to speed up time to market and clinical study diversity and inclusion imperatives will leave the industry with no option but to embrace trial decentralization and increasingly adopt DCT-enabling technologies for remote monitoring, engagement, and telemedicine. Entrepreneurs and disruptors in this space must convince investors that the DCT business model is viable. Study sponsors and contractors should take advantage of the favorable regulatory environment for DCTs and incorporate DCTs into their workflow. This will alleviate geographical barriers and bring clinical trials to a broader range of patients.

4. A quarter of US adults will be treated with RPM tools for chronic conditions: The need to monitor, report on, and analyze patients with chronic conditions in their time of need is a national imperative. Forrester predicts that remote patient monitoring (RPM) tools will play a critical role in treating multimorbid patients to mitigate potentially avoidable hospitalizations and the exacerbation of chronic diseases. In 2022, RPM became the beating heart of acute care at-home programs, now operating in 114 systems and 253 hospitals in 37 states.

There are now five codes specific to RPM services, facilitating reimbursement and widespread adoption. The global RPM market is projected to reach $175.2 billion by 2027, from $53.6 billion in 2022, at a CAGR of 26.7%. Devices like weight scales, pulse oximeters, blood glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, heart monitors, and wearables will improve clinical prognosis and remove socioeconomic hurdles due to social determinants of health. RPM implementers must take a multifaceted approach to safeguard their own network infrastructure, devices, the edge, and the cloud using administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for optimal security and patient outcomes.

5. Forty percent of the hospitality industry will offer mental health benefits: A healthy workforce is the backbone of the hospitality industry, yet the burnout rate of people working in this industry is among the highest of all industries. Stress, anxiety, and depression caused by employment rank among the top reasons that hospitality employees seek employment elsewhere. Four out of five hospitality employees report high-stress levels due to their positions, and the CDC reports an overall increase in depression and anxiety symptoms to 42% across the US. In response, the hospitality industry is snapping into action and has begun offering healthcare benefits — including mental health services — to combat high turnover. In fact, 87% of employers said that enhancing medical health benefits will be among their top priorities in the coming years.

This includes access to free or reduced-price counseling sessions, subscriptions to virtual health offerings, as well as subscriptions to wellness apps. Monitoring morale and welfare requires reassessing and reestablishing burnout prevention and management strategies continuously. Employers should partner now with a teletherapy company that offers evidence-based solutions — including cognitive behavioral therapy, coaching, symptom tracking, and therapy appointments — to ensure improvement in employee mental health. This will bolster their employee medical benefit offerings, help retain staff, and improve their employees’ mental well-being.

What You Should Know:

– Today, Walmart announced it will begin offering over-the counter (OTC) hearing aids* at Walmart.com and Walmart Vision Centers in CO, MI, MO, OH, PA, TN and TX, and will soon be available at additional Walmart Vision Centers nationwide. 

– Walmart’s new offerings include an assortment of top brands like Lexie powered by Bose and HearX that will offer cutting-edge technology like Bluetooth and self-tuning app capabilities and discreet, sleek designs, with prices ranging between $199 – $999 per pair, compared to prescription hearing aid prices that typically range between $4,400 – $5,500 per pair.  

– Additionally, customers can also easily access a full range of health care services to address their “whole health” and proactively manage their health through preventative care at our Walmart Health Centers. These state-of-the-art Walmart Health Centers offer hearing tests and other healthcare services for customers with a team of qualified medical professionals that can help them assess potential hearing loss, rule out underlying medical conditions, and determine if a hearing aid is right for them.